Solid Ground
by whydowefall
Summary: 'There's a line between yes and no, right and wrong, here and there.' Norrington dreams.


**Title:** Solid Ground  
**Rating:** R  
**Summary:** _'There's a line between yes and no, right and wrong, here and there.'_ James dreams.  
**Pairing:** Sparrow/Norrington  
**Timeline:** Post DMC  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything from Pirates of the Caribbean, and am not making any money off of this. All characters in this work of fiction are the property of Disney.

There's a line between yes and no, right and wrong, here and there. You feel it bubble in your body as you look in the mirror now. Your body is that of a proper man, a strong man, a man of morals and justice and honor, but you can't look yourself in the eyes anymore. Men of morals and justice and honor don't taste bile and liquor when they swallow sea air and proper men don't touch themselves at night and imagine it's another man that has wandering hands. A pirate that has wandering hands.

You want to believe that you did everything that you were supposed to do, and you want to feel as if you've won a war. But what you feel is guilt and shame and anger. What you feel is remorse. You lost everything, you won everything back, and still you're empty. Hollow.

Women love you again. They flutter their fans as you pass and giggle behind their hands, and it kills you a little more every time you have to smile at them. Because you have to smile at them; you are the Commodore, you are handsome and charming and the man all their fathers want for their darling daughters, you are the man who they don't know about at all.

Jack Sparrow. You hate saying that name and thinking that name, so you say it and think it with flourish. Bloody Jack Sparrow and his bloody greed and his bloody freedom. You don't know what happened to him, and you don't want to, and you're happy that way, or at least you tell yourself that. You're not happy.

You dream. You dream about the time that he kissed you, rough and with the taste of salt on his lips and his tongue and you were rough back. Wood against your back as he pushed you to the wall, hips tight together, hands flying towards buttons on clothing. Wood under your palms and hands around your stomach, and you wake up panting and hard from the dream. You can't remember, anymore, why. Why you had bite marks dotting the place where your shoulder meets your neck. Why you had bruises blossomed on your knees. Why it felt good.

You dream. You dream about the time that you watched him watch you from across the ship. Daily drone of the ship around you, and you watch him watching you for what seems like hours before he gets up and heads to his cabin. You head to his cabin, and before you can even kick the door closed behind you, his hands are on your chest and his lips are near your ear whispering, "I'm not sly." And you don't have to answer back, because with each kiss down his body you're saying the same thing back and you wake up panting and hard from the dream. You can't remember, anymore, how many times you've woken up from the same dreams about the same things. How many times you tell yourself not to dream.

You dream. You dream about a lot of things, and you wish that you didn't.

Once. You want to see him once more. He's free, and you hate him for it. He's free, and you're back to being trapped, confined, alone. See the Commodore on display, watch the way he smiles and nods and is proper and prim and is everything a good man is. See the pirate, free.

At night you run your smooth hands over your body, imagining they were calloused and you lick your lips, imagining they were salty. At night, you muffle the sounds you make by biting till there's blood, on your tongue and on your lips and on your brain, because you should hurt for what you do.

You try to find the irony in what you do. You fail at finding the irony in what you do. You say a lot of things during the daytime, and then moan them at night. Occasionally you wonder if Jack would find something ironic in the way you plead to silent ghosts that sit on the edge of your bed and won't leave you be, won't let you sleep without hating the way you love it.

Jack is a ghost to you.

You dream of ghosts, then.


End file.
